


god of all ways but only death's to me

by straddling_the_atmosphere



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Prophecy, Sea God
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 10:06:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15683235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/pseuds/straddling_the_atmosphere
Summary: He thinks he might be claimed now. That if anyone looked at him, if anyone touched him, they’d see,This one belongs to the god of the sea. Try to take him at your own risk.Silver discovers what it's like to be in a relationship with a god.sequel toapollo's curse





	god of all ways but only death's to me

It is night-time and they lie together, spent and sated. Silver gazes at Flint, the sweat-damp sheen of his skin and the way it glimmers in the moonlight. He is red everywhere, red like blood splattered all over his skin, the thick, powerful set of his naked thighs, his broad, strong shoulders, the thatch of crimson hair that starts just under his naval. Atlas, strong enough to hold the entire world at bay. 

“The sea and the moon have a relationship, don’t they?” Silver asks after a moment. Flint opens one eye, as green as the fresh seaweed that grows along the ocean floor. 

“Yes.”

“Was Ms. Barlow a witch, then? A goddess of the night sky?” Silver watches as Flint sits up slightly, the thick, corded muscles of his shoulders shifting. 

“I knew her as human,” Flint says after a moment. “But then, I wasn’t aware of myself then, was I?” A small smile lifts the corner of his mouth as he looks at Silver with undisguised fondness, and Silver feels himself flush. “If she was a goddess, then I hope she is up there, having shed her mortal body, and is finally at peace.”

The sea rocks the ship gently and Silver runs his middle and index finger from the hollow of Flint’s throat all the way down his sternum, feeling the way Flint’s muscles shift under his touch. 

“What am I then?” Silver asks softly, as he always does, his fingers sliding through the trail of soft hair on Flint’s chest.

“You know what you are to me,” Flint says, as he always does, eyes half-lidded and heavy. Silver can feel the stirrings of Flint’s arousal against his hip, and his breath catches, like it usually does, at the prospect of bedding this particular god. His hand flattens on Flint’s rib cage, feeling it extend and contract with each breath, and his own skin is hot and clammy, responding to Flint’s arousal with an increasing of his pulse.

Flint just continues to watch him, never making the first move, those eyes dark on him. He looks like a lion in repose, a strong, thick body made for hunting and power, and Silver feels ravenous. He thinks he might be the antelope. A deer gazing into the eyes of the creature about to destroy him. He can still taste Flint on his tongue from hours before, the heavy way he had filled it, the way his jaw ached afterwards. The way Flint’s rough hand had pulled pleasure out of him afterwards, Silver’s own cries pressed against Flint’s hair.

 _I think I like this form of worship,_ Flint had said afterwards, licking his fingers clean, Silver exhausted and panting under him. He’d reached down with his hand into Silver’s hair and tipped his head back, and Silver had bared his throat easily, then groaned into the kiss Flint had given him, deep and wanting and possessive.

He thinks he might be claimed now. That if anyone looked at him, if anyone  _touched_ him, they’d see,  _This one belongs to the god of the sea. Try to take him at your own risk._

Silver has never wanted to be owned. He still doesn’t. But he can’t deny the appeal of having a god watching over him, making sure nothing else can happen to him, no other limbs will be lost. He can’t deny the appeal of having something that will never be taken from him, at least through death. Because he might be Flint’s, but Flint is also  _his._

* * *

“There is something different about your captain,” Madi tells him once when they’re in bed together. She had taken the development of Silver and Flint’s new relationship without much surprise, just raising her eyebrows at him when Silver had blushed his way through the confession. 

“I hope he isn’t a jealous man, because I don’t intend to let you go,” was all she had said and Silver had blushed harder. Flint wasn’t a jealous man, though he had been worried. Flint had just snorted and said if Silver thinks Flint didn’t already know about him and Madi, he must think him stupid.

“He’s come into his own, you could say,” Silver says. Now that he’s been proven right about his own beliefs, he finds himself strangely reluctant to tell anyone, though he probably wouldn’t be believed anyway. A curious thing, really. When Silver lies, people believe him. When he tells the truth, everyone believes him to be lying.

Madi hums and rests her chin on his chest, looking at him, and Silver traces a finger down the smooth skin of her cheek. 

“You still don’t trust him, do you?” he asks.

“I think he has made you believe you can only be a leader through him,” she says. “When those men would do anything for you because they love  _you_ , not him.”

“I need him as much as he needs me.” Silver’s voice is quiet and he cups her face, pressing a kiss to her forehead, her nose, the corner of her mouth. She huffs but he can feel her lips curve up into a small smile. “Just like I need you.”

She rolls her eyes but he can tell she’s pleased, and she tugs him into a kiss, their conversation soon forgotten.

* * *

Silver has thought about how he’d die often, maybe too often. He’s thought about what would be the worst and what would be the best way to go. Ever since Muldoon, since gripping his hand and watching the life go out of him, he’s firmly moved drowning to the top of the list. 

Debris sinks around him and he tries to shove his leg off, the metal caught in rope and dragging him down further. His throat closes up and he feels a scream caught in it, his vision going black along the corners, then expanding until he’s blind, yanking until his leg is free with a pop, the iron floating away from his body.

When he opens his eyes again, he can see his own body as if from above and he sucks in a breath in shock.

 _You won’t die today,_ someone says in his mind and he veers wildly, unable to see a thing. There’s a chuckle that echoes everywhere, not centered in any direction and the hair on the back of his neck rises.

 _You have a god protecting you,_ the voice says.  _And he would not let the water take you from him. Not when he is of the water himself._

“Who are you?” Silver asks, watching his own body push up slowly through the water.

_A watcher. Someone who has been waiting for him to awaken since he was cast out._

Silver furrows his brows. “Why was he cast out?”

_You do not need to know everything, John Silver. Your god will never remember everything, not while he’s in this form. But you make him powerful–-you make others fear._

_“_ Why are you telling me this?”

There’s a pause.  _You have started a war that cannot be won, not in this lifetime. You know this, you’ve seen it._

 _“_ We can’t win even with a god on our side?” Silver asks weakly, resigned.

_Gods have never once prevailed against humans, much as they like to think they have._

Silver’s body has nearly reached the surface and he asks, urgent, “What do I do? How do I save them?”

There’s a sound like a sigh whistling through his ear.  _What you do best, Cassandra’s son. Tell the truth. And then lie._

* * *

When Silver wakes, he’s gagging on seawater, pitching forward to retch it all out. His arm jerks and he looks at the chains around his wrists blearily.

“Sea spit you out,” a man tells him, hair redder than even Flint’s. “Ain’t seen anything like it.” The sky outside the lean-to is dark grey, nearly the color of night, and the ocean rages wildly, slamming against the shore. "It's been like that all day. Like it wants you back."

Silver looks at him, finally focusing. "What do you want?" he rasps and the man snorts.

"I know who you are," he says. "Imagine how much money I'd get when I turned you to the British myself."

Silver feels a blip of panic but he lets out a slow breath. "That would be stupid of you."

"Oh?"

Silver bares his teeth in a grin. "I'm like you, you see. Except for one difference--Captain Flint will come for me. Like Blackbeard didn't for you, Hands."

Hands snarls and presses the blade of a knife to his throat. Silver swallows, the metal cool against his sunburned skin, and watches him.  _Tell the truth,_ he hears faintly, a whisper of a song in the breeze.  _And then lie._

* * *

"Would you end this war for him?" Silver asks Flint, eyes half-closed as he feels Flint's chest move with his breaths. He wonders if Flint even needs to breathe anymore. Flint makes a sleepy, inquisitive sound. "For Thomas?"

Flint opens his eyes, luminous green in the light of the setting sun. "Where is this coming from?"

"I'm just curious." He traces the trail of hair that starts just under Flint's naval with his fingers. 

Flint exhales. "I don't know, Silver." He sounds exhausted. "It's been a long time. He wouldn't even recognize who I am anymore." 

Silver props his chin up on his hand to look at him, and Flint has that expression on his face, like just even mentioning Thomas destroys him. He stares back.

"I bet something inside him knew what you were," he says. "I don't know how anyone could meet you and not."

"Plenty of people have met me and not." Flint sounds wry.

"Yeah, but they weren't--" The words stick in his throat and he swallows. Flint blinks at him and Silver turns away. "He loved you." He had to know, in some way. Like Silver did.

Thunder rumbles in the distance and Flint reaches out to tug Silver close to him again.  
  
"It doesn't matter," he says, voice final. "He's not here anymore."

As Flint drifts off to sleep, Silver watches him, taking in the powerful lines of his body, lax and vulnerable in his sleep.  _But what if he was?_

* * *

There's an aching agony that's made a home inside of his ribs. He keeps seeing Flint's face, the grief etched in the lines, keeps thinking of the last time he saw Madi, her determined clenched jaw, her bright eyes. Alive.

 _You have started a war that cannot be won,_ he remembers and he clutches at his own hair, a shuddering breath caught in his throat. The sting of ocean water feels good, though he knows the water is only as turbulent because of Flint's own mourning of Madi's loss. They had become close, when they thought Silver dead.

"We both care for you," was all Flint had said when Silver had asked, but even those brief words had made him feel warm.

He can see Flint in the water now, still clothed, the ocean curling around him like a whirlpool. It's new, that kind of power, and Silver can taste salt on his tongue along with iron where he'd bit it with his teeth in order to not scream. Spitting into the water, he watches as red swirls and fades into the green. 

 _An offering,_ he thinks wryly.  _If my leg wasn't enough, Flint, have my tongue. Have my words. Take them from me because I don't want to know how this ends anymore. I don't want to see the inevitable failure._

Madi is gone and he knows it won't be long until Flint is too.

* * *

The truth about Cassandra is this: she said no to a god and was given the gift of prophecy, but the truth would taste like ash in her mouth. Nobody would ever believe her and she would watch as tragedy came to pass.

The truth about John Silver is this: he holds a gun to the only god he's ever worshipped, hands trembling, and he tells the truth-- _we will lose this war, Flint, can't you see it?_

He tells the truth and the truth and he tastes ash and he is Cassandra's descendant, he who is gifted with prophecy, he who loves a god who loves him back, he who didn't want this gift.

The gods watch from above as their banished god of the tides loses everything to a man who had given everything to him.

It's funny, really. The gods never win. But neither do we. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know how to write a happy ending i guess!!! maybe i'll write a third part that makes it happy, idk anymore, anyway, let me know what you think!


End file.
